Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 251

Reykjahólabók
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legendary were for the most part longer, quite dramatic, and narratively
superior texts to those in the Low German Passionael; 3) the main sources of
Reykjahólabók resembled the sources of the Passionael, which contains
condensations or abridgments of originally longer legends; 4) in several
instances the translator and compiler of Reykjahólabók had access to and
made use of more than one source. This happens, for example, in the legends
of Gregorius peccator and Stephen protomartyr.
The first and second thesis are related, namely that the legends in the
Passionael were not the sources of Reykjahólabók, but that these must have
been much longer versions. There is on the one hand so much additional
matter in episodes that otherwise correspond to the Passionael, and on the
other hand there are so many deviations from the Passionael that the Low
German legendary cannot have been the source. That the deviations are not
the work of the Icelandic translator is attested by their occurrence in legends
older than those in the Passionael, and which were in fact among the sources
of the Low German compilation. Moreover, if one compares the Low
German and Icelandic texts, the latter are not only much longer, but they are
also better narratives from the perspective of structure, development and
motivation of plot, and style, the last despite their strange orthography and
occasional non-Icelandic idiom. The fact that the Passionael itself ultimately
derives from a number of different sources provides one explanation for
both the similarities and the differences between the Icelandic legends and
those in the Passionael.
The Low German prose-Passionael is a translation of a High German
prose-Passional, more commonly known as Der Heiligen Leben, composed
at the turn of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century. The author of this prose
legendary based his texts not only on older collections like the Legenda
aurea and the Middle High German Verse-Passional, but also on individual
works, such as Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius (ca. 1195), Ebernand von
Erfurt’s Heinrich und Kunigunde (ca. 1220), Reinbot von Durne’s Georg
(1231/1236), and the anonymous Oswald (12th century), a so-called
SpielmannseposP The prose-Passional, both High and Low German, is
thus a collection that derives from matter chronologically, generically,
qualitatively, and quantitatively quite disparate. The uniting factor in the
prose legends is their style. The tales are generally told in the third person
with very little dialogue and no suspense; the action is poorly motivated. A
is somewhat puzzling, since a comparison of selected passages - significant for an
assessment of Reykjahólabók - in these incunabula as well as earlier (High German)
and later (Low German) copies (undertaken by me in the fall of 1990 in the Royal
Library in Copenhagen) reveals no noticeable discrepancies in contents or texts, only
the usual printers’ errors or here and there the omission of a word.
19 Cf. “Der Heiligen Leben,” Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon,
2nd rev. ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981, cols. 621-22.